BarCampMelbourne 2012

Request

Hi all,

Peter tells me you have a meeting tonight, so here's an email with as much information as I can muster to hopefully allow you to consider this without requiring further details.

BarCampMelbourne is an unconference, that is ideally really low cost or free for all participants. In previous years we have managed to make it free through sponsorship, but realise that this isn't always possible. For this reason, the ticket pricing it designed to cover the complete cost of the event without sponsorship, with partial refunds given when sponsorship comes in. This means there is no financial risk to running the event.

In order to ensure maximum participation, we negate the likelihood of non-attendance of any participant by reducing the final ticket price to no less than $10, with a full refund (if funds suffice) given on the day of arrival. This provides an incentive for people to not pull out at the last minute and means we are less likely to be faced with a situation where we have free spaces and participants who were turned down.

As mentioned, historically, BarCampMelbourne has never run at a loss, often having surplus funds that have been fed back in to the open source community.

This year, we already have $1,800 in confirmed sponsorship awaiting invoicing (I'm currently lacking an organisation to run this through or an account to pay it in to) and a further $2,500 of unconfirmed sponsorship that we expect to be confirmed in the next week. This puts us in a position where the event is free for all participants. Additional funding will allow us offer additional benefits such as providing travel funds to those that wouldn't otherwise be able to attend.

The current budget, for a two day event with accommodation, comes in at $4,304 based on: